1 : the act or an instance of consoling : the state of being consoled : comfort
2 : something that consoles; specifically : a contest held for those who have lost early in a tournament

In private meetings, according to David Maraniss’ biography When Pride Still Mattered, the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi called it the “Shit Bowl”, “a losers’ bowl for losers.” He was referring to the now-forgotten National Football League equivalent of this Saturday’s 2010 World Cup Third Place Game between Germany and Uruguay: the Playoff Bowl (official name, the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl), that ran from 1960 to 1969, and whose introduction was probably more inspired by the now-defunct third place game in the NCAA men’s college basketball championship (that ran until 1981) than its FIFA World Cup equivalent.

The playoff bowl originated in 1959 as a vehicle for the National Football League (NFL), then facing fierce competition from the American Football League (AFL) some years before the two merged, to get an extra post-season game on television: before 1959, the winners of the Eastern and Western Conferences in the NFL played for the Championship, and that was that. By pitting the runners-up from each Conference against each other to play for third place on national television the week before the championship game, the league doubled its post-season exposure.

Following the AFL and NFL merger in 1966, a new playoff structure was introduced in 1967. Four teams now advanced to the playoffs. The Playoff Bowl — the Losers’ Bowl — survived a couple more years, but it had lost importance for NFL television exposure due to the expansion of the playoffs. It disappeared into the dustbin of history; the NFL, perhaps with Lombardi’s words ringing in their ears, has struck all the Playoff Bowl games from their official competitive record, now classifying them only as exhibitions. For the record, the Detroit Lions have the most third place finishes in the NFL, winning three Playoff Bowls. Lions as Losers? Pah.

Also often forgotten is that the FA Cup featured a third place game for a short period from 1970 to 1974. The first such game saw Manchester United claim third place over Watford, in front of a crowd of just over 15,000 at Highbury, Brian Kidd scoring twice. The games appear to have been dropped four years later due to a lack of interest.

Louisiana Bulldogs, winners of the Consolation Game at the Bowling Green Tournament, 2008.

Which brings us to Saturday’s game. Is it a Losers’ Bowl, something FIFA should abolish as an anachronism, perhaps pretending it never existed in the first place, as the NFL tries to do with its Shit Bowl? Or is the World Cup Third Place Game, in fact, often the provider of entertaining games and curious moments we should cherish, as Mark at Two Hundred Percent points out:

So the World Cup third-place play-off is the most meaningless match in international football? Holders of tickets for England’s Wembley friendly against Hungary in (count ‘em) five weeks may have a view. There wasn’t a great sense of that meaninglessness when England were in the 1990 version, with Bobby Robson as animated as he ever was when exhorting England to “now go and win it” after David Platt’s late equaliser against Italy. And, more pertinently, Bulgaria’s Hristo Stoichkov wasn’t beating the ground with indifference in 1994’s game when he had to make do with a share of that tournament’s “Golden Boot” (the laces and the insole?) after hitting the post.

So it is that Miroslav Klose, if fit, Diego Forlan, Thomas Mueller and even Luis “the Cat” Suarez can find meaning in this year’s “consolation match.” Certainly nations who appear less regularly in the later stages of international tournaments seem to regard third place as something worth playing for. South Korea and Turkey certainly had a go in 2002, Croatia cared in 1998 – as many bruised and battered Dutch players could testify. Sweden’s third place in 1994 was hugely celebrated – even though they’d been finalists in 1958. Poland took justifiable pride in their third places in 1974 and 1982 (the former making England look good after Poland knocked them out in qualifying). And England themselves in 1990…

I met someone yesterday who told me he was a connoisseur of third place games; preferring them, he said, to the World Cup final (admittedly, he was about to finish a half-pint of whiskey he’d apparently all drank himself). More uncertain narratives, lower stakes, more goals (this is statistically true; check it!), an underdog game you can root for as a curiosity event in itself.

We should also note its distinction from the Playoff Bowl: The World Cup third place playoff match was not invented for television, unlike its NFL counterpart. It was first played in 1934, long before the World Cup was broadcast on television, presumably in a similar spirit as the Bronze Medal game played in Olympic Football Tournaments before 1930, then the most important global soccer competition. In the 1928 Olympic tournament, Italy destroyed Egypt 11-3 in the Bronze Medal game to claim third place. Indeed, the consolation did not stop there: an entire consolation bracket was also played out featuring teams knocked out even earlier in the tournament.

I am unsure — and would like to know why — a third place game was not played at the 1930 World Cup, the only time the World Cup has had a knockout phase that hasn’t included a playoff for third place (the United States were posthumously awarded third place by FIFA due to their overall better record than Yugoslavia at the tournament).

Yet though it wasn’t invented for television, it may indeed survive because of television: as Soccernomics points out, the Third Place Game is popular on television, providing a 4.9% boost for the tournament’s ratings as a whole, “only slightly less than the semifinal effect.” Maybe you don’t know why you watch it; but you do. It might be a Losers’ Bowl, but it’s a winner for FIFA, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Photo: eagle102.net on Flickr, under a Creative Commons License.

Take, for example, Suarez’s last-minute handball on the line to deny Ghana what was surely the winning goal. In rugby, there would have been no need for a penalty — a penalty goal would have been awarded. Or Lampard’s shot against the Germans. Again, in rugby, if the referee wasn’t sure, he could request a video replay. On a basic level, it seems that Sepp Blatter would be well-employed to drop by on his oval ball counterparts.

The new Hand of God, or why Suarez should be free to handle on the line again

When Luis Suarez palmed away Dominic Adiyah’s goalbound header in the final minute of stoppage time in Ghana’s quarter final meeting with Uruguay, it was the very definition of cynical. His foul denied the Ghanaians a clear goalscoring opportunity and when Asamoah Gyan blasted the subsequent penalty into the crossbar rather than the net, the outrage began.

With both Adiyah and John Mensah missing from the spot in the penalty shoot-out to send Uruguay through, the outrage hit fever pitch, especially on Twitter, where there were suggestions that Ghana had been robbed, and comparing Suarez’s handball to that of Thierry Henry’s in France’s playoff against the Republic of Ireland.

At the very least it seemed perverse that a player could indulge in that level of cheating and seemingly get away with it. Hence the calls for teams to be awarded a penalty goal rather than face the uncertainty of a spot kick.

But before the knee-jerk it’s worth considering one major difference between the handballs of Henry and Suarez: the Frenchman got away with his, with the diminutive Uruguayan didn’t. The referee spotted Suarez’s hands knocking Adiyah’s header away, sent him off, and awarded a penalty to Ghana.

Suarez was punished according to the letter of the law and couldn’t be blamed for Gyan’s missed penalty. The referee had acted according to the letter of the law and given Ghana another chance to cement their place in the semi-finals – a chance that, statistically, they were more likely than not to succeed at.

Given that more penalties are converted than missed, you could even go as far to say as what really killed Ghana’s chances was losing the toss to decide who went first in the shootout. The team taking the first penalty typically wins 60 per cent of shootouts.

But that’s statistics. What we’re talking about here are the rules that allowed Suarez to handball at the expense of a goal, which has lead calls for football to introduce a penalty goal, along the lines of rugby’s penalty try.

Paying the penalty

Briefly, in rugby, if the referee believes the defending team has prevented a try by committing an offence, he can award a penalty try. Crucially, the referee has to believe a try would probably have been scored (or, in rugby league, believes, in his opinion, that a try would have been scored but for the conduct of the defending team). In other words, the referee’s opinion is the final say on a penalty try.

Therefore, this isn’t as clear cut as proponents of penalty goals — such as ex-referee Graham Poll — would have you believe, if you were to apply it to football. It brings the referee’s opinion even further into play, and with it more possibility of human error. Often the penalty try is one of the more disputed calls in rugby.

Suarez’s case is unusually clear cut, insofar as we can be reasonably sure that the ball would have gone into the net had the striker not handled the ball (although he was in such a position to attempt to head the ball). But the problem comes when you then apply the rule practically to the game.

Let’s say on the back of Suarez’s handball, FIFA introduced a directive saying a player who deliberately handles on the line has clearly denied a goalscoring opportunity and the referee should award a goal rather than a penalty.

Firstly, this would mean Harry Kewell’s contentious red card in Australia’s game against Ghana would have resulted in Australia being penalised by one goal rather than giving Gyan the chance to score from the spot.

Secondly, suppose after this directive is implemented, a situation occurs in a high-profile game where a player rounds the goalkeeper and is about to pull the trigger but is hauled back before they can roll the ball into an empty net by a desperate defender. A penalty is award and the defender is sent off but the penalty is saved. The directive is widened.

Then an increasing number of situations occur when a clear goalscoring opportunity is denied, some of them outside the box. Each one increases the argument for awarding a goal for this, but increases the judgement call the referee has to make.

Inevitably the referee will award a goal erroneously at some point in another high-profile game, where a penalty would have been a suitable punishment instead.

In short, implementing this directive would increase the pressure on the fallibility of the referee. The laws for a handball on the line may not be morally just but they are fair and consistent.

A brief moral diversion

It’s also worth pointing out that Suarez’s handball was an extremely unusual circumstance. Normally a player who ‘takes one for the team’ by committing a professional foul does so in the knowledge that they will be putting their team at a disadvantage for a period of play and, in tournament football, ruling themselves out of the next match.

In Suarez’s case, this issue did not come into play. As this was literally the last kick of the game, Uruguay wouldn’t have been disadvantaged by losing a man for the rest of the game. Similarly, the outcome for Suarez would have been the same: he wouldn’t have played in a semi-final regardless of whether he handled the ball or not.

But by sacrificing himself at the last possible moment of the game, he ensured his team stood more of a chance of progressing than if he didn’t handle (a utilitarian action rather than a deontological one).

These situations don’t occur that regularly in football, so to introduce a system based more on human error of the basis that it works in another sport is questionable. You can also argue that Uruguay paid the price for Suarez’s actions as they faced their toughest game without one of their best players.

Watch it again, Sam

But Suarez’s handball hasn’t been the only case where football has been advised to look to rugby for tightening up the rules, in this case video technology for goals, when two high profile errors in one day saw a clamour for FIFA to return to look at the issue.

First, Frank Lampard’s shot against Germany was adjudged not to have crossed the line when replies showed that it clearly had, then Carlos Tevez opening goal for Argentina against Mexico was allowed to stand despite coming from a significant offside position. Again, there was a call for video replays.

In rugby, these are used when the referee cannot be sure that the ball has been placed over the try line. Instead he will ask the video referee if there is any reason why he cannot award a try and base his decision on this recommendation. Similarly, in cricket, the video umpire is used for contentious decisions, usually around lbw.

It’s worth pointing out that even video refereeing isn’t flawless and can’t always be used to provide a clear cut answer, Mark Cueto’s disallowed try for England against South Africa in the 2007 World Cup Final being a prime example. Although the video official was probably right, you can still find plenty of rugby professionals who believe the try should have stood.

But if video replays had been available, would they have helped in either case? Probably not for Tevez’s goal. The linesman missed the striker’s offside and the referee saw no reason not to believe his colleague’s decision that the goal should have stood.

In Lampard’s case, the referee may have chosen to stop play to check whether the ball had crossed the line or not, although again, this would be down to the discretion of the officials. Video replays would only be useful if the officials were able to make the most of them at the time. If the referee saw no cause for doubt then it is unlikely they would be deployed.

As with the Suarez case, the thin end of the wedge argument comes into play here. If video replays were made available to the referee then at what point should the line be drawn. Goals? Penalties? Red card offences? Throw-ins? It’s fine to say take the principle from another sport, but it has to be workable for football.

One further option on top of this would be to give managers the option to challenge decisions by the officials, along the lines of American Football and tennis. While fairer to teams as a whole, whether it should be implemented depends very much on your view of whether it would break up the game to an unacceptable extent or not.

Hawk-eyes

Perhaps a fairer if less wide-ranging solution would be the use of goal-line technology to determine whether or not the ball has crossed the line. In this instance, football would be looking to cricket and tennis, where the Hawk-eye system is in place, rather than rugby.

Quite simply, this would — either via electronic communication or a separate video official — inform the referee whether or not a ball had crossed the line. Or, as an alternative, have the referee refer to Hawk-eye for a decision on a goal.

The goal line technology perhaps has a more pressing case to be solved than the unusual Suarez situation. While still uncommon, there are enough poor goal-line decisions, such as the phantom goal in Reading v Watford or Pedro Mendes’ 40-yard chip for Spurs against Manchester United, that justifies bringing the technology in. Not to mention that genuine goals that aren’t usually have far more of an impact on a game than a handball on the line.

Unlike video referees, there’s also less of a risk of human error here. Granted, technology can take the fun out of the game but in this case, it’s worth being correct rather than relying on human error. A good goal not given is far more galling than a bad tackle.

It’s also worth pointing out that Hawk-eye, and video technology in general, doesn’t reach down to all levels of the game in whichever sport we’re talking about. Rugby, tennis and cricket all only have the technology available to certain levels. It’s not ideal, but it shows how hard it is to reach grassroots with any form of technology.

Speak when you’re spoken to

But amid all the talk of importing rules from rugby, there’s one law where football could learn a lot from its oval ball counterpart. There’s no need for technology, no cost involved and it could be applied to grassroots football: only the captain can speak to the referee.

In rugby, it’s the captain’s job to be responsible for his team and answer to the referee. Dissent is not tolerated and players surrounding the officials is uncommon and often dealt with by a card. This isn’t to say the sport doesn’t still have issues with player behaviour, but there’s a lot more control on the pitch.

The FA have mooted this idea from time to time, most recently around the Respect campaign, while UEFA considered such a move in 2006, as part of a wider consideration in retaining referees in the game.

Suarez’s handball was cheating but was such a large talking point because it was so unusual, as were the calls for a penalty goal.

The odd goal that isn’t given in error is more common but still rare. And while video replays would solve a lot of arguments, they’re by no means conclusive, or even necessary.

In contrast, players intimidating and swearing at the referee is a common occurrence on pitches week in week out at every level. I know which issue I’d rather see dealt with first.

These images of certain teams tend to persist far beyond any relation to reality.  ESPN can still keep trying to sell Brazil as samba soccer, but perhaps after this World Cup people will stop buying it, unless it’s all laid at Dunga’s door (Maradona to coach Brazil in Brazil at the 2014 World Cup, anyone?!).

Or the Germans still managing to shock the English in 2010 when they produce a player or two who doesn’t fit into the robotic stereotype, as Gabrielle Marcotti pointed out last week:

It’s not as if, before the wave of recent immigrants were integrated in the team, Germany were a bunch of giant, muscle-bound Robocops (or Stefan Effenbergs, if you prefer). This is the side that produced Pierre Littbarski in the 1980s and Tomas Haessler and Andy Moller in the 1990s. Players who were uber-German and uber-talented, blessed with flair and creativity, as well as sterling technique. Come to think of it, so is Thomas Mueller and he’s as Teutonic as they come.

The fact of the matter is that German football has a long history of producing flair players: it’s just that we tend not to see them as such for the mere fact that they’re… well… German.

Another good example of this was superbly discussed by Raphael Honigstein yesterday, addressing the flood of commentary surrounding the apparently suddenly dull Dutch team, as if total football had been flooding through their veins until this World Cup kicked off. That is, of course, nonsense:

This sense of realism should not be confused with a radical departure or even a betrayal of the grand Dutch tradition. It’s always been there, to greater or lesser extent, over the course of the last 30 years. Mourning the demise of “Total Voetbal” these days makes as much sense as lamenting the switch from black and white to color television or the disappearance of horse carriages from city centers. The Dutch moved on decades ago. Most casual observers have simply been too lazy to notice it.

Honigstein points out that even the Netherlands’ sole major championship winning team at Euro ’88, for all the magnificent skill of van Basten and Gullit, was backed in brutal style by Ronald Koeman, while Jan Wouters in the 90s precursed Mark van Bommel as villainous midfielder pretty nicely.

At the excellent blog Minus the Shooting, the question of “relevant and irrelevant histories” is brought up as we consider narratives about national teams slightly more broadly. Writing ahead of today’s first semi-final, the question of how to fit the prospect of Uruguayan victory into a neat historical context is raised:

Spain finally lifting the trophy is a narrative that already carries a sense of inevitability – it’s a triumph that has already been written, and held back from general release for two years. Now that Brazil have no longer already won the tournament, there’s a case for saying that Spain have already won it. The same narrative can be quickly adapted and refitted for the Dutch – ‘the long wait is finally over’. There is no comparably comfortable frame in which to fit a Uruguayan victory.

So, by the fact we don’t have a neat storyline to fit Uruguay into, they confuse us. As for style: how does Suarez’s handball fit with Forlan’s flair into a soundbite?

Uruguay, indeed, present quite a conundrum from both a common perspective on their style of play and their place in the sport’s pantheon: they have two World Cup victories, but none since 1950. They were once famed for their magnificent teams of the 1920s and 1930s, but who remembers the wizardry of José Leandro Andrade today?

Uruguay have instead in recent decades, especially in the British media, been associated with negative defensive play ever since the 1966 World Cup. Their glorious past did not happen in the television era, so it may as well have never happened at all, as Minus the Shooting continues:

Granted, Uruguay’s glories were a long time ago. But when has that ever been relevant to the expectations placed on football teams? Brazilian players are still being feted for what their team did forty years ago; England are judged (and judge themselves) every four years by the standards of 1966; African teams are still labelled as naive and impetuous based on the performance of Zaire in 1970. German teams and Spanish teams are just about still viewed in the context of their past representatives as villainous mecha-men and talented bottlers respectively, although these two seem to be finally losing their grip this summer. In the group stages, the BBC wheeled out an excruciating montage showing clips of past German triumphs interspersed with footage of pistons and machinery – but even they have since realised that this German team represents something different. These three-time World Cup winners would be fresher faces on the podium than the Spanish or Dutch.

Putting aside the two unfolding exceptions above – and progress on these fronts will be immediately undone if either team reverts back to historical type for even one game – these images seem impervious to the passage of time, and are held to remain true no matter how much contradictory evidence amasses. The fact that Uruguay have underachieved since 1950 doesn’t explain the strange discrepancy about them; they are the only World Cup winners whose achievements have been definitively consigned to the history books, and deemed not relevant to modern analysis. You can never write off the Germans because of their past wins – but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a pundit say ‘Well, I’ll tell you what… I think Uruguay might be dark horses to win back their title this year. End the sixty years of hurt.’

The obviously ill-fitting narratives surrounding all four countries in the semi-finals perhaps suggests that we ought to work a little harder to dispel them before judging teams: Spain are no longer bottlers (2008 and all that), Germany are no longer teutonic automatons, the Dutch are no longer Brilliant Orange, the Uruguayans are neither their glorious ancient history nor their negative 1960s. But maybe all of them never even were those things, except briefly, in the first place; Spain, after all, first won the European Championship in 1964.

El Pais, published in Montevideo, Uruguay

AD, published in Rotterdam, Netherlands

Courtesy of newseum.org

Back in October of 2009 when Egypt was hosting the U-20 World Cup I wrote a somewhat esoteric preview of the countries in the competition oriented by one of my favorite soccer quotes (from Eric Hobsbawn): “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” It was the start of the ‘Year of African Soccer,’ to be followed closely by the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria, the African Cup of Nations in Angola, and soon the mega event of them all: the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.  Drawing inspiration from my all-time favorite World Cup preview, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey’s excellent edited collection of essays and miscellany related to the participants in the 2006 World Cup, the shared goal was “to use soccer as a lens and an excuse to learn something about the wider world.”

To my great disappointment, Weiland and Wilsey seem to have not produced a new Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup for 2010, leaving me feeling a bit adrift.  Sure I can look up many a preview opining about whether Serbia’s defensive pairing of Nemanja Vidić and Branislav Ivanović is strong enough to get them through the group stage—but where else could I learn that Serbia had the highest proportion of tractors per capita of any country in the 2006 World Cup (at least when they were combined with Montenegro)?  Combining that absence in my soul with the fact that the daily ‘Sweeper’ series here on Pitch Invasion is on a hiatus, I thought I’d try to offer some content over the next few weeks in the form of moderately esoteric World Cup group previews.  The mostly light-hearted intention is simply to both provoke and satisfy curiosities.  Take these group previews, which I’m planning to drop sporadically over the next few weeks, for what they are worth.  And feel free to add the many odd and interesting facts about these places I’m sure I’ll miss….

Group A: The Group of _______________

The provocative debate about which quartet to label as the “Group of Death” has always seemed to me to have so much more potential—why can’t we have enough catchy labels to distribute through all the groups?  Why not the “Group of Death Warmed Over,” or the “Group of Death be not Proud,” or the group of “Death Anxiety”?  Why does everyone have to fight for just one silly name?

In that regard, Group A is as good a place to start as any—since my sources tell me that the origins of the “Group of Death” as a moniker lie with a combined effort of Mexican journalists and Uruguay’s manager in the 1986 World Cup—two nations whose teams will meet in Group A (along with France and South Africa).  In this tournament, however, Group A probably has little claim on being the actual “Group of Death.”  In fact, with France ranked 10^th in the world by FIFA, South Africa as 90^th, Mexico as 17^th, and Uruguay as 18^th, it’s the only of eight groups in the tournament without one team ranked in the top eight.

So I had to look outside the soccer world to find high rankings, and here’s the best I could come up with: what Group A does have is land mass and, believe it or not, relative wealth.  In terms of land mass, of 223 ranked nations Mexico is 15^th, South Africa 25^th, France 43^rd, and Uruguay 90^th—which, on average, is the lowest (ie, most land) in the tournament.  In terms of relative wealth, Group A is the only one in the tournament where Gross Domestic Product per capita (a standard global measure of wealth) is above $10,000 for all four countries—all the other groups have to factor in a Nigeria ($2250 per person), a Paraguay ($4500), or the like.

Finally, and probably most significant to soccer fans, Group A is the only group in the tournament comprised entirely of World Cup host nations—in addition to South Africa, Uruguay hosted the first World Cup in 1930, Mexico hosted in 1970 and 1986, and France hosted in 1998.  That can’t happen too often (though it is also interesting to note that it almost also happened this year in Group H with Spain—1982 hosts, Switzerland—1954 hosts, and Chile—1962 hosts, missing only Honduras).  So I’ll label Group A ‘The Group of Gracious Hosts (with little chance of actually winning the tournament).’

Who would advance if there were any justice in the world?

This segment is my admittedly subjective ranking of the two teams most deserving of making it out of the group stages—based on a secret formula combining soccer history and global politics.  In the case of Group A one team is easy to eliminate: France has only a tenuous claim on deserving to have qualified at all for the World Cup based on the kerfuffle with Ireland, and one often gets a sense that the French themselves are too debonair to really worry about silly things like soccer.  So in my mind they are out.

I also have a soft spot in my heart for South Africa, which is partially defensiveness about all the criticism they are getting as hosts from a lot of people who know almost nothing about the place.  South Africa doing well also seems to mean a lot to Nelson Mandela, and I’d argue that Mandiba has earned the right to get whatever he wants.  So in my mind they are in.

The second spot gets more difficult.  For Uruguay to be ranked 18^th in the world with a population of only 3.4 million people is a mighty impressive feat.  But beyond any TV watcher’s familiarity with Diego  Forlán’s abdominal muscles, I just don’t know enough about the place.  In contrast, I know enough about Mexico to realize that it really, really matters to the nation if they do well in the World Cup.  Further, the fact that my own USA has a rising tendency to scapegoat and stereotype our neighbors to the South makes me want to offer some sort of conciliatory gesture.  As a US fan I do still harbor bitterness about Rafael Márquez’s attempt to maim Cobi Jones in 2002, but in the spirit of South Africa I’m trying to offer forgiveness.

So from my completely subjective standpoint, if there were any justice in the world South Africa and Mexico would advance from Group A.  But keep in mind, there is rarely any justice in the world.

Group A – Some Stats

Before kick-off, Uruguay vs Argentina, World Cup 2010 qualifier. Centenario Stadium, Montevideo, Uruguay. October 14th, 2009.

Photo credit: Joelr on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Estadio Centenario

Big Story
Uruguay were once the greatest force in world football, revolutionising the way the sport was played, and putting South America on the map in the 1920s and 1930s. They remain the smallest country to ever win the World Cup, with a population under four million.

I have a long-held desire to visit the crumbling but historic Estadio Centenario, the stadium in Montevideo that played host to the first ever World Cup final in 1930, in the 100th year of Uruguayan independence, as Uruguay defeated Argentina 4-2, sparking off days of wild celebration.

And the now rather decrepit Estadio Centenario is where tonight 60,000 will pack in for the visit of Argentina in a winner-takes-a-ticket-to-the-World-Cup contest. 3,000 Argentinian fans will cross the sliver of the River Plate separating the two countries, from a nation with ten times the population and one which in the decades since their famous early footballing clashes has come to dominate football in South America, Brazil aside, as Uruguay have fallen off the map.

But even Brazil have won only twice in twenty-odd games at the Estadio Centenario and Uruguay have won four Copa Americas finals at the stadium over the decades since 1930. I for one hope this proud football nation and historic venue has one more glory night in it, and sends Diego and the mess he’s made of Argentina packing to the playoffs.

Worldwide News

• Given the amount of money in top-flight English football, and the further benefits to the profile of the game and elite infrastructure a successful World Cup by England would bring, doesn’t it seem awfully greedy for the World Cup Bid Committee to be complaining the British government is only giving them £2.5m towards the bid, instead of the £5m they had apparently been promised?  Surely private finance could fund the entire bid. Meanwhile, the Bid Committee seems to think adding diversity is as simple as employing a pornographer’s long-time right-hand woman (who was also last year arrested for fraud, but later cleared): Karren Brady hitches on board.
• The terrible news of US forward Charlie Davies’ injuries from a car crash yesterday was weird in many ways. For those of us who follow a number of US-based soccer friends on Twitter, the flood of instant news, sorrowful updates, rumours, and links was almost overwhelming throughout the day — even before blogs, let alone mainstream media, had time to comment (indeed, reporters broke the news first via tweets). 99.99% reflected genuine concern and a touching feeling of community over the tragedy. Perhaps most strange, though, were the brief, sad updates from Davies’ friends on Twitter — players hearing the same news at the same time and reflecting their shock. An odd experience, and I felt I was intruding on something at times following along.
• Turns out the rumour that Sven was set to manage North Korea at the 2010 World Cup is not going to happen. Still, the news stayed alive long enough for the Telegraph to put together its list of the top ten weirdest appointments of all time.
• The U-20 World Cup on Friday looks set to be a cracker, with the tournament’s most exciting teams, Ghana and Brazil, making the final. 101 Great Goals has an excellent preview.
• How high can MLS ticket prices go, asks Fake Sigi, given the need for the league to raise revenue without scaring everyone away?  Good question, but considering a scary proportion of the attendees at most MLS games are comps anyway, perhaps the key is to start selling more tickets at some price rather than raising prices, meaning those who are already paying aren’t always subsidising the entire event for others.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Fans of Club Nacional de Football, Montevideo, Uruguay. April 30, 2009.

Photo credit: Joelr on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

1930 World Cup poster

The U.S.’s surprising run in the Confederations Cup is hardly the first time they have surpassed all expectations on the world stage. Their 1950 victory over England is the best-known; but in many ways, their surprising run to third place at the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay remains the most impressive achievement in the team’s history, and the biggest lost opportunity to grow the game domestically.

Ironically, the mere existence of the World Cup was in part down to America’s relative lack of interest in soccer — Fifa, aware that the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932 would not feature Association Football and in dispute with the IOC over the status of amateur players in the tournament decided to organise their own world championship for the first time in 1930. All members of Fifa, including the United States, were invited to take part without qualification for the tournament to be held in Uruguay. The distant travel was too much for some European nations, but 13 countries did participate in the inaugural World Cup.

It has become part of world football folklore that the U.S.’s team was one stocked with ex-pat professionals from Britain, but this was not so. Though many were of Anglo-origin — as would be expected in a nation with a huge Anglo-immigrant population playing a British sport — only one of the U.S. players, George Moorhouse, had played professionally in Britain. Moorhouse made two appearances for Third Division Tranmere in the early 1920s, but most of his experience had come in the American Soccer League, and it was that league that provided the bedrock for America’s strong team.

The U.S.’s performance in 1930 surprised the world in part because of their disastrous showing at the 1928 Olympic Games, which until the advent of the World Cup two years later was the world’s premier soccer tournament. The United States had been humiliated 11-2 by Argentina in the first round, though the truth was the American selection policy had adhered far more rigidly to the IOC’s strict rules on amateur participation than most other nations, leaving them considerably handicapped.

In contrast, the 1930 American team was strong and athletic, drawn from the ranks of the American Soccer League’s high-quality teams, which had begun attracting professionals from abroad with its relatively high wages and standard of play. The U.S. were drawn in group four for the World Cup with Paraguay and Belgium.

Their opening match was against Belgium, and the U.S. brushed aside the Europeans 3-0, with two goals from left-winger Bart McGhee, including the first in U.S. World Cup history. Though born in Scotland, McGhee had moved to the U.S. at the age of thirteen to join his father in Philadelphia, a Scottish international forward for Hibernian and Celtic (indeed, the McGhees remain the only father and son combination to play for different international teams). Fellow forward Bert Patenaude, at 20 a surprising inclusion in the squad, scored the other American goal. According to David Wangerin, “the Belgians were unable to cope with America’s secure defence and incisive passes out to the flanks”, with the U.S. easing up and “wisely saving themselves”, their coach later said.

Patenaude would score three more in the U.S.’s second match against Paraguay, the first hat-trick in the history of the World Cup in another surprisingly comfortable 3-0 U.S. victory (Patenaude’s second goal in the fifteenth minute has been the subject of a long historical debate, as it has been variously also credited as an own goal and to teammate Tom Florie, but in 2006 Fifa ruled the credit went to Patenaude). This victory was all the more impressive as Paraguay had considerable pedigree, runners-up in the previous year’s Copa America and recent victors over Uruguay (who would go on to win the World Cup).

The U.S., then, had taken the opening round by storm, with six goals for and none against. They headed to the semi-finals to take on the Argentinians, who had humiliated them two years earlier at the Olympics. The U.S. coach, Wilfrid R. Cummings, was full of bravado: “We are only interested in the final,” he said. The U.S. arrived at the Centenario Stadium under a military escort, in front of a passionate 71,000-strong crowd.

The first half was tightly-fought, the score 1-0 to Argentina at the break, thanks to a goal from legendary playmaker Luis Monti. The U.S., though, eventually succumbed on a pitch far larger than they were used to (eight yards over regulation length) and with a referee unable to control the game, with centre-half Raphael Tracey lost to injury and (most harmfully) goalkeeper Jimmy Douglas hobbled by an ankle injury.

Argentina's Guillermo Stabile slots the ball past American goalkeeper Jim Douglas

In the second half the U.S. lost their head and their nerve, allowing the referee to infuriate them, as this story that Brian Glanville recounts in his history of the event illustrates:

John Langenus was the referee; he never tired of relating the bizarre story of the American trainer. During the second half, he blew his whistle for a foul against America. At this, the team’s medical attendant, who was also an official, rushed onto the field, case of medicaments in hand, to make violent remonstrance. In the course of it, he threw his case to the ground and it burst open, spilling out its contents, among them a bottle of chloroform, which promptly broke. The rising fumes engulfed and tranquilized him; he was assisted, peacefully, from the field.

Scopelli and Stabile struck twice in the first fifteen minutes after the break as the U.S.’s inexperience in big games finally told. From then, it was all over, and the U.S. collapsed to concede three goals in the final ten minutes, to give Argentina a win by the flattering score of 6-1, but it was not the humiliation of 1928. A tough ending to a remarkable run, the U.S. had shown that their team — all but one of whom had learned their trade entirely domestically — could live with the best in the World Cup.

Their third place finish remains unmatched, as soccer suffered a sad collapse domestically in the 1930s, the promise of the American Soccer League’s stars never matched again. The strength of the U.S. performance can be seen in the interest it raised abroad in many of the ASL stars, with several heading to Britain to play for teams including Manchester United, Aberdeen and Celtic. The world had taken notice of American soccer for the first time.

[For more on the U.S. performance in the 1930 World Cup, see Soccer by Brian Glanville and Soccer in a Football World by David Wangerin]